Dog Leg Injury
My main question is how long can I expect my dog’s leg injury take to heal? Details below.
While exercising my dog the other day, I heard him start wailing as if he was in an excruciating amount of pain. I didn’t have a perfect line of sight on him so I don’t know exactly what happened, but I heard a chain link fence rattling as it happened. The fence is intertwined with a lot of vegetation and he loves to run through it while sniffing/searching. We’ve done this numerous times and it’s a part of our daily routine. When he came back into sight, he was not putting any weight on his hind right leg. He stood still for a good minute without putting that leg down as I looked him over for any signs of obvious damage, but I wasn’t able to find any glaring issues. He started using the injured leg again within a few minutes but it was noticeably bothering him.
Incredibly ironically, we had x-rays scheduled for his hips that morning just a few hours later. I mentioned the injury to the vet, but she seemed to be in a hurry so I didn’t get much time to fully discuss what happened and get his leg evaluated super thoroughly. They did a quick evaluation while he was sedated on the table for the x-rays, but said nothing was glaringly wrong.
After the sedation wore off in the later part of the evening, my dog still showed signs of discomfort and wouldn’t use that leg while going down steps.
For reference, my dog is a 2 year old male Large Munsterlander. He requires a lot of exercise to be content and I am not sure what to do going forward. I want to take it easy and allow the leg to heal, while still satisfying some of his activity needs.
Any advice on what to expect in the coming weeks as far as how long it may take to heal or how much exercise I should give him while it heals would be greatly appreciated.